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OSAMA bin Laden was the exclusive raison d'etre for the US' relentless air strikes on Afghanistan for the past three months. `Bin Laden dead or alive', was the war cry.

Few individuals in history had gripped the imagination of the entire world rousing such violent and conflicting emotions.

To a large number of his fervent devotees populating the Islamic world, regardless of whether or not the governments of the countries concerned are part of the so-called Global Coalition against Terrorism, he is a preceptor par excellence, a messiah with the divine mission of redeeming the world and ridding it of "infidels".

But to the US, which has had a big hand in building up this multi-millionaire Saudi fugitive to larger-than-life proportions in the 1980s, he is now the ultimate terrorist, devil incarnate, all the evil-minded villains of Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels rolled into one, the ruthless monster personifying the beastliest traits of Attila, Ghengiz Khan, Timur and Dracula.

The US is convinced that the far-flung `holding company' he heads will not stop unleashing `catastrophic terror' which does not baulk at the use of all categories of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, biological, chemical, cyber-based — unless he is exterminated.

There is a common belief that al-Qaeda is the umbrella organisation through which Osama has been carrying out his plans of (to quote Omar Khayyam) conspiring with Time and Fate to shatter the world to bits and remould it nearer to his heart's desire. Al-Qaeda is only a subsidiary of his International Islamic Front to whose original mission for waging jihad against the US and Israel Osama has added India also.

For the 40-50 outfits comprising the Front, as pointed out by Mr B. Raman, in his recently published book, Intelligence: Past, Present and Future, Islam is not just a religion; it is a weapon of coercion and intimidation with which to subjugate the `infidels' and the non-practising Muslim states and establish the hegemony of the Ulema.

"International Islamism", he says, "encourages extra-territorial loyalty by holding that the requirements of loyalty to trans-national Umma (Islamic community) and to Islamic solidarity over-ride those of loyalty to the nation-state in which a Muslim is resident and of which he or she is a citizen.

It is thus subversive of traditional loyalty to the state, unless the state be Islamic...It defends the right of Muslims to travel to and wage Jihad anywhere to protect and help fellow Muslims".

Osama's International Islamic Front is built on these principles which had also been incorporated into Pakistan's statecraft. Although suddenly, under American pressure and in return for dollars, it joined the coalition, only the naive will take this as a proof of its change of heart.

The assertions by the constituents of the interim Afghan Government that Osama is not dead but very much alive in Pakistan should not be taken lightly.

Any way, there can be no happy new year for the Americans until Osama is accounted for "dead or alive".

B. S. Raghavan

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